Decade Definers: 1980s

The 1980s… Angsty teenagers, adventures in space, a bleak outlook of the future, lots of guns, and even more hairspray!

We’re excited to announce the continuation of our ‘Decade Definers’ series – we’ve previously discussed the 60s offering up films such as ‘The Jungle Book’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, and James Bond. We then discussed the 1970s towards the end of last year, which gave us the chance to cover films like ‘Star Wars’, ‘Jaws’, ‘Alien’, and the birth of mainstream horrors.

Now we finally get to tuck into the 80s and all it had to offer to the world of film. With it being such a huge decade, we’ve decided we’re going to split up contributors input into individual articles so they can discuss their subject(s) as much as they’d like! We’re going big for the 80s (just like the hairstyles of the time!).

Throughout this decade we will be looking at the birth of franchises, including ‘Indiana Jones’ and ‘Back to the Future’ and how these shaped the future of franchises as we know them. We’ll also be covering various genres, such as the rise of the villains in horrors, and how Sci-Fi films stretched audience’s imaginations, and how could we discuss the 80s and not talk about High School and teen focused films? (We’re looking at you, John Hughes). There’ll be lots more coming over the next few weeks which we’re really excited to share with you so keep your eyes peeled to our social media pages!

We’d love to hear from you about your favourite films from the 80s – so please feel free to comment on the posts or come discuss it with us on Twitter! Who knows, you may even feature in a piece! Or, if you’d like to contribute to this run of decade definers, please drop us a DM on Twitter to discuss further. We’d love to have a wide range of input!

Kicking things off next week, Chris takes a look at ‘Indiana Jones’ and how the franchise is not only a personal favourite of his, but how Spielberg’s work on it is still a source of inspiration to filmmakers even to this day.